What’s the specific energy and power? If it isn’t terrible, could be very good for things like spacecraft.
Deep space probes are already nuclear power sources.
Right now this is mostly a radio isotope heat source and a peltier device to convert the temperature differential to electricity.
Yeah, RTDs. But I don’t know if these semi conductor based ones would have better performance.
Not for space craft if what @MilderRichter says is right. To generate power from a peltier you need a temperature differential between the two sides. It is very hard to bleed off heat in space since it’s a vacuum. That means a temperature differential is very difficult to achieve and it takes power to do that. Which would necessitate more of these, which means a bigger or additional heat removal system, which means you need more of these, which means a bigger or additional heat removal system, etc, etc, etc.
With all the CCP misinformation about them making 5nn chips, this could be another bullshit tech coming from the CCP.
According to the article, it outputs 100 micro watts at 3 volts. Apparently for 50 years.
So less than 150watthours over its entire lifespan?
So you’d need 10,000 of them to generate 1 watt.
Sounds useless.
Vapor
Meanwhile the Voyager proves launched in 1977 are still live and kicking. Yeah one of them is getting pissy at us but it’s still rolling.
Is this similar to Nuclear Diamond Battery that EEVBlog covered years ago?
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=5M5MF6KE-jY
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Just what we need, radioactive materials in our waste stream.
It already exists, so…
…so let’s make it worse?
With the amounts being talked about, it’s not really that much of a concern. We aren’t talking about putting a demon core in your pocket.
One individual Duracell is also pretty harmless but I sure am glad that people don’t throw them into nature.
I mean yeah, but no one is talking about tossing either into nature.
That is exactly what I commented on. See OC:
radioactive materials in our waste stream
I took “waste stream” to mean “the process after a device is no longer used.” Some waste is recycled, some is out in landfill, and more than should ends up in nature.
Most of the time, these types of things would be recycled. But obviously that doesn’t happen all the time. The rest of the time will be dominated by landfill, but that’s actually not that huge a problem. It’s not like the metals are going to grow legs and run around irradiating stuff any more than a Duracell. The last group is the environment proper, but keep in mind there’s already radioactive shit out and about in the world. You can find radioactive rocks literally just laying on the ground. It’s not actually that much of a danger unless a large amount of radioactive material (or a small amount of highly irradiated material which this is not) manages to find its way into a pile.
Honestly, I’d be more concerned about the conventional pollution aspect than the radiation.
